Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Why Doctors Die Differently

The Wall Street Journal recently published an interesting article regarding the choices doctors make at the end of their lives. It conveys ideas consistent with Dr. Terrell's choices at the end of his life.

"It's not something that we like to talk about, but doctors die, too. What's unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared with most Americans, but how little. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care that they could want. But they tend to go serenely and gently.

Doctors don't want to die any more than anyone else does. But they usually have talked about the limits of modern medicine with their families. They want to make sure that, when the time comes, no heroic measures are taken. During their last moments, they know, for instance, that they don't want someone breaking their ribs by performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (which is what happens when CPR is done right)."

Read the full article here.

No comments:

Post a Comment